


People We Never Were

by Monstrous_Femme



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universes, F/F, F/M, PTSD, this ended up being largely about trauma and identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-07 03:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14072331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monstrous_Femme/pseuds/Monstrous_Femme
Summary: Penny is trapped in the Underworld forever. Penny is here and in love with Julia.It's a little complicated for everyone involved.





	1. Chapter 1

_Somewhere between wolf and girl, Julia can feel her pulse pounding. She races through an Underworld forest. The spiny fingers of the trees reach out for her, well aware of the things she’s done. Her feet hit the ground, beating time with her heart . There is a door up ahead, but to open it she would need a key._

_There are too many keys from which to choose, but wolf-Kady is ahead on the path, carrying Unity between her teeth. When Julia reaches her, both are human again. She takes the key from Kady’s hands and places it through the door._

_It swings open, and Richard’s body is dragged through. He is dead, arms and legs carried by marionette strings that lead to the sky, held by no one._

_And then the eyes snap open, red and feral._

*

“Julia!”

The voice was close enough to touch. The voice was a thousand miles away.

“Julia!”

She forced her eyes open. Her breath came in gasps, and she realized from a distance that she was crying. Her eyes refused to focus. “Penny?” she asked. “I thought you were—”

“Not your Penny.”

Right. Because of the Underworld, and ironclad contracts, and a library full of secrets that Julia couldn’t even begin to think about when the ghost of Reynard’s fingers lingered on her throat. _Just a dream,_ she told herself, but it wasn’t. 

Her heart was beating too quickly. _Panic attack,_ her mind supplied. Sure enough, the taste of blood was rising in her throat. She wondered how far it was to the window if she needed to vomit. She wondered if Dean Fogg was right that she used too much rose water in her cleaning spells. There were so many things she’d know, if she’d ended up here at Brakebills and not—

Julia closed her eyes again, but it did nothing to prevent the image of her loft, covered in blood.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Penny’s voice said. There was a hand on her shoulder. She wondered how long it had been there. 

“I’m not her,” Julia snapped. “You don’t have to—I’m not her.”

The voice sounded angry. “I’m not doing it because I think you’re my Julia. I’m doing it because you’re clearly _not_ her.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, it’s obvious that something bad happened to you in this universe, okay? And yeah, maybe the reason I want to help you is because you remind me of her, but mostly it’s because you _were_ her, until whatever bad thing that happened made you different from each other. ”

Julia opened her eyes. “How can you tell That I’m different?” she whispered. _How can you tell I’m not me, what was that girl even like and how can I go back to being her? How do I fit back into that skin after everything that’s happened? ___

__Penny’s arm was around her shoulder now, although Julia wasn’t not sure he’d noticed. She’d never been this close to him before, never seen the warmth in his eyes when he’s not staring at her in fury. “It’s how you hold your body. Like it takes some sort of battle-magic energy to even stay upright. I’ve never seen you like that before. No matter how bad things got, you never looked like you were working this hard.”_ _

__All of a sudden, Julia could feel it. The tension in her stomach, the way she forces her spine straight. She wanted to be angry at Penny, that he can see through what nobody, not Quentin, was ever able to see._ _

__But another wave of exhaustion hit her, and she just rubbed her eyes instead._ _

__“I’m not trying to pry,” Penny said. “But the nightmares? I have them too. Fuck, I guess we’ve all seen some shit at this point, haven’t we?”_ _

__Julia stared at him blearily. “How did you know I was having a nightmare?”_ _

__“You screamed. Scared the shit out of me. I travelled in here expecting to see the Beast. Guess that’s some of my own shit coming to the surface, huh?”_ _

__Right. Because Penny, this Penny, went through everything Julia’s versions of her friends had managed to avoid. The death and the pain and the blood all over the floor, the things everyone but her and maybe Kady had escaped unscathed—they were all as real to this Penny as they were to her. Sure, her timeline’s Penny had died, but this one had _lived_ , lived through it all._ _

__Sometimes, living through it was worse than being destroyed by it._ _

__It was all too much to think about. Julia buried her face in her hands. “Do you think they have therapists for magicians? Like, we’d go in and say ‘yeah, I’ve died thirty-nine times and then some other magical bullshit happened to me and I’m on a quest to bring back magic but the only way to finish the job is to betray an entire magical race and open up the possibility of slavery and genocide?’”_ _

__“Fuck, I don’t know,” Penny said. He laughed, but even Julia could tell it was forced. “Somehow I don’t think enough magicians live long enough to have to deal with their shit, you know? All of the travelers I meet are either very young or very dead. Maybe there’s no point in therapy when you’re going to die anyway.”_ _

__“I don’t want to die, though.” Not usually. Not anymore._ _

__Penny’s fingers stroked her shoulder. “Yeah, me neither.”_ _

__They sat in silence for a moment. “I should be getting back to sleep,” Julia said. “Tomorrow’s another long day of being as okay as I can so that people don’t worry about me.”_ _

__Penny removed his arm from her shoulder and stood. “I’ll let you sleep, then,” he said. “Come get me if you need anything, okay? I mean it.”_ _

__He was halfway to the door before Julia found her voice. “Could you—stay? Please?”_ _

__Penny’s forehead crinkled in confusion before he gave her a genuine smile. She’d never seen his face like that before. “Of course,” he said. “Just in the room, or do you want me to climb into bed with you?” If it was a joke, it fell flat._ _

__“Bed. Please.” Julia couldn’t look him in the eye. If Kady saw her like this—but this wasn’t the same Penny, and Kady would never know, and—_ _

___Turn off your brain,_ she ordered herself. This was about getting back to sleep, whatever it took. She hadn’t been joking about tomorrow. _ _

__Julia laid down facing the wall, refusing to look as Penny walked over. Maybe if she pretended she wasn’t doing this to Kady, it would be as though she wasn’t. Penny pulled up the covers to climb in, but kept several inches of space between their bodies. Like she wanted him to. She was safe if he wasn’t touching her._ _

__She knew he wanted to touch her._ _

__Her skin was unclean, covered with the residue of Reynard’s magic and the dream she’d only just finished having._ _

__Maybe there was a way to make it clean._ _

__“You don’t have to stay so far away,” Julia said softly. “It—it might be nice to know you’re close.”_ _

__“All right.” Penny shifted closer, but there were still a few inches between them. Julia wanted him to back away. She wanted to drag him closer, until there was no space left and her skin would no longer be her skin._ _

__She pulled his arm until it was around her waist. Penny tensed up for a moment, then relaxed and pulled her in. She could feel his skin touching hers where her shirt had ridden up. The real Penny—well, the one that was real in her universe, the one that loved Kady and hated her—never would have touched her like this. She wouldn’t have wanted him to._ _

__Julia wasn’t sure she wanted it now, but she knew by this point that her mind wasn’t a place she could expect to fully understand._ _

__“I used to take care of you like this, you know,” Penny said. She could feel his breath on her ear. “Or, not-you, I guess. My Julia. Towards the end, when we knew the Beast was going to kill us, I’d spoon her like this every night.”_ _

__All of a sudden, his arms felt too tight around her stomach. Julia’s chest compressed with fear. “Let go of me,” she said, a quiver in her voice. “Let go of me right now. Please.”_ _

__Penny’s arm disappeared at once. “Sorry,” he said softly. “Guess things can’t really be the same here, can they? It’s all different. Even the small shit that Jane lady changed fucked us up.”_ _

__“Yeah,” Julia said softly. “Jane fucked us up.”_ _


	2. Chapter 2

For the third night in a row, Penny was in her bed. For the first twenty minutes or so, Julia had tried to fall asleep, but now she was wide awake and staring at the ceiling. 

She couldn’t help but feel like she was taking advantage of Penny, using his love for a different version of her to get him to take care of her now. But having him here, knowing he saw her as a version of herself that she so desperately longed to be—it was too soon to let go of that. She didn’t know enough.

“What was she like?” Julia asked. She’d meant it to be a whisper, but it came out loud and clear, echoing in her ears if not the room itself. She closed her eyes. “Your version of me?”

Penny’s fingers stopped their movement on her shoulder. He took a minute before speaking. “She was strong. Angry, too, when she needed to be. She wanted to know everything there was to know about magic, but that meant learning how fucked up it could make things, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“She saw magic—differently, than I do.” Penny took a deep breath. “I spent my whole life hearing voices, you know? Thoughts I was crazy more often than not. But Julia—my Julia—saw it as something beautiful. Like it could actually fix things.”

The first time Julia had managed a spell in this timeline, she’d cried from how beautiful it was. She’d spent four hours trying to recreate the tiny spark and when she had, she’d cradled it between the palms of her hands, not caring when the flames reached up and burned her. 

“She wasn’t brave like you, though.”

Julia’s laugh came out harsh and brittle. “What makes you think I’m brave?”

Penny pulled his body entirely away from her, the way he’d started doing every time she had a strong emotional reaction to something. As though he were trying to learn what her body could and could not accept. “You came into my universe,” he said slowly. “You confronted a master magician who used to be your best friend, and you did it by taking off part of your soul and giving it to him.”

“Yeah, because I had to.”

“Exactly.”

His refusal to elaborate made Julia’s stomach tighten into knots. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Penny didn’t answer. Behind her closed eyelids, Julia could see herself standing between Reynard and Kady, making that choice not to run. It was before Reynard that she’d been brave, not after. Not now. 

“You’re wrong,” she said, but quietly, so that Penny couldn’t hear her and try to argue.

*

“Fairies still hiding out,” the bunny said hoarsely. “Not making deals. Fucking pricks.”

Julia closed her eyes. “Tell Margo I’ll keep looking here,” she said. When she opened her eyes, the bunny had vanished.

_Fuck._ Julia flopped down onto the couch and leaned back. The key quest had taken a lot out of her, but at least she’d felt like she was helping someone. Bringing back magic would have made her feel marginally less shitty about the past year of her life.

It would have made her feel like there was a reason she’d kept herself alive for this long.

Fen was out somewhere tonight, probably working with the glassblower Dean Fogg had introduced her to so she’d have something to do besides getting drunk and thinking about her daughter. Quentin was back in Fillory following Margo and Eliot around, and alternate-universe Penny had gone out to explore the novelty of a world in which the majority of people were still alive. Julia was alone.

She opened her notebook, determined to follow through on her promise to try to help, but her list of places to search for the fairies was quickly dwindling. They could be anywhere in the world by now—anywhere in multiple worlds, really—and Margo was right. If the fairies wouldn’t make a deal, there was no way to force them to come out. Getting into the fairy realm seemed to be a more promising option, but the whole settler-colonialism aspect of going into someone else’s realm and stealing the one thing keeping them safe from invaders made Julia’s skin crawl. There had to be another way to get the key.

The door to the Physical Cottage swung open, and Julia remembered that there was one person left in the world besides her: Alice.

“Hey,” she said softly. 

Alice nodded at her, then gingerly sat down on a chair a few feet away. “Any news from Fillory?”

“Just what we already knew.”

Alice’s bag was teeming with books. Julia knew Quentin would want her to ask about them, would want the answers about the library that Alice had so far refused him. 

She didn’t ask.

“How’s Penny?” Alice asked. 

Julia hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

“I don’t think he liked me in his timeline,” Alice said, looking down. “I keep trying to talk to him—I want to understand why he’s different, and why I’m different. I’m not sure if it makes any sense, I just—I wish I could understand why experiences change us so much.”

“Maybe it’s not his timeline that’s the problem,” Julia said. She chose her words carefully. “Maybe he doesn’t like you—us—talking to him to understand ourselves better.”

“Yeah, maybe.” 

They sat in silence for a moment. Alice looked like she wanted to say more, like her brain was so teeming with words that she was having trouble deciding which to say first.

“I get it,” Julia said. “Wanting to know everything. Wanting it to be fixed.”

Alice looked at her with empty eyes. “Thanks, but you don’t,” she said. “Because you don’t know what it’s like to have felt that way and then to lose it.” She got to her feet and slung her backpack over her shoulder. “Trust me. It’s better not to know.”

*

Julia made the smoke spiral, up towards the ceiling until it formed into stars and then vanished.

“Party trick,” she said with a shrug, but she could feel herself smiling. Penny was looking at her like she was special. Like he saw her.

It was the fifth time they’d spent the night together, not that Julia was keeping track. Penny was playful and kind, and sometimes if she was careful with her mind she could forget that when he talked, it wasn’t really to her.

She wondered if he was doing the same sort of mental tricks.

“Show me again,” he suggested, and she was around the room making clouds and fireworks and every small, easy thing she could think of.

It had been a long time since Julia had felt so small and easy.

She’d kept Penny out of her room for the first few nights since he’d told her she was brave, and since he’d come back they hadn’t talked about the other universe. It was easier to pretend they were meeting now for the first time or had maybe always known each other, anything but the circumstances that had really brought them here.

“It’s beautiful,” Penny said.

Julia returned to the bed. ‘Like I said. Party tricks.”

“Okay. Then show me something different now. Something real.”

_Something real. _Julia nodded, thinking quickly. She looked around the room and tried to focus her energy, but nothing felt right. She couldn’t keep throwing this sort useless magic around the room and expect Penny to stay interested. And if she couldn’t keep him interested—if he realized that she wasn’t who he wanted her to be—__

__Whatever she did right now, it would have to be spectacular._ _

__Julia closed her eyes reached inside of herself until she found the source, then stepped outside of everything in search of Penny’s pain. When they’d found the harbinger that had led them to Reynard, he had healed Kady and she’d finally believed._ _

__Once Julia found the pain, it enveloped her. She couldn’t open her eyes, but she saw everything, a tangled, pulsing mess. She reached out for a thread, trying to unravel it, but couldn’t. It didn’t fit in her hands. It didn’t fit anywhere._ _

__She couldn’t tell if it was Penny’s pain or hers or both._ _

__And then a door slammed open, and the thread snapped, sending Julia floating back into space._ _

__Kady was standing in the doorway, arms crossed and looking realer than Julia knew what to do with. She’d forgotten that this was also the universe she lived in. There were rules about this sort of thing, if only she could remember what they were._ _

__“So it’s true.” Kady’s voice was matter of fact. “And from the looks of it, you’re fucking him.”_ _

__Julia’s mouth went dry. She could feel the bed underneath her, as though she were returning to it from a great distance. “We’re not—”_ _

__“Kady, right?” Penny asked, rising to his feet. A charming smile had already emerged on his face, one that clearly belonged to people he didn’t know but wanted on his side. “We met a couple of times in the timeline I’m from. I think you were working for Marina, are you friends in this universe too?”_ _

___He’s doing this all wrong._ “He’s not your Penny,” Julia said. Nausea rose in her throat. _Please, let this be fixable, don’t let me lose her._ “We brought him in from another universe. Well, he kind of insisted on coming along.”_ _

__“I know he’s not my Penny,” Kady said. She refused to make eye contact with either of them. “Quentin told me when he took the Unity key back.”_ _

__“Quentin stole the key from you?”_ _

__Kady snorted. “As if he could. He wanted it back, and there was no point in me keeping it if it wasn’t going to fucking work.”_ _

__The ground they were on seemed anything but solid. Julia searched Kady’s face for clues. “Are we okay?”_ _

__“Are we—Jesus Christ, Jules.” Kady’s voice broke on Julia’s name._ _

__There was nothing matter of fact about any of this, not now._ _

__Penny was still watching them, clearly trying to piece together what was happening. _He shouldn’t be here._ But he was, and rather than ask him to leave, Julia took Kady by the arm and steered her out into the hallway. _ _

__“Look, I’m sorry,” she said once the door was shut behind them. She cast a spell so Penny couldn’t hear them. “I didn’t want you to—you know I would never have done anything with your Penny.”_ _

__Kady’s arms were still crossed. “Do you really think this is less fucked up? You’re screwing an alternate universe version of my boyfriend who’s trapped in the Underworld for the next million years.”_ _

__“Billion,” Julia correctly automatically, then flinched as she heard how the word must have sounded._ _

__Kady rolled her eyes. “Right, of course. Because _that’s_ what’s relevant in all this.”_ _

__“I’m not having sex with him,” Julia said. “He was just there when I needed him.”_ _

__“ _I_ was there when you needed me,” Kady snapped. “Even when you barely had it together enough to be human. _He’s_ just following you around because he’s convinced one day you’ll turn around and be some weird other version of you that used to get his dick up.”_ _

__“That’s not fair.”_ _

__Kady snorted. “Is any of this?”_ _

__“Look, I’m sorry if you wanted—”_ _

__“Him? Some other universe version of the guy I’m in love with?” Kady snorted. “Please. I don’t _want_ him. But that doesn’t mean that anything about this situation is fair.”_ _

__Julia watched helplessly as Kady stormed off down the hall._ _


	3. Chapter 3

Even with the privacy charm, the bar was too crowded. Julia’s skin crawled with the notion that someone here might try to listen in, try to know her. But it was the only place Kady had agreed to meet her, and Julia needed Kady. She drummed on the upholstery of the booth she was seated in and stared out the window.

Finally, the sound of footsteps approached and Kady slid into the seat across from her. She had dark circles around her eyes. She did not look at Julia.

“Well?” she said after a while, still refusing to look. “You’re the one who invited me here.”

“I’m sorry about Penny,” Julia said. The words stumbled out of her mouth. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Kady stared resolutely out the window. She was chewing her lip the way she did when she had something she needed to say but didn’t want to. “I guess I’m sorry too,” she said all at once. “Quentin did warn me, it’s just—I don’t know, seeing you with Penny like that—”

Julia put a hand on Kady’s arm. “Hey, I get it,” she said. “It’s a shitty situation. Especially for you.”

“Yeah, you can say that again.”

“I wasn’t lying, though. I’m not sleeping with him.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kady said. “That’s not the part that pisses me off, it’s _him._ And I can’t keep being mad at you for it. I mean, it’s not your fault that he’s in love with you.”

“If it helps, I’m not going to do anything about it.”

Kady shook her head. “You will. And you know, I’m not sure I can even blame you. He has this—there’s this way he can look at you, like he knows all of your secrets, even the ones you keep from yourself. And then he tells you he loves you, and you wonder how he could do that when he knows so much, but—either he’s telling the truth or he’s the best goddamn liar in the entire universe, you know?” Her voice broke at the last part. 

“I’m so sorry,” Julia said. She reached for Kady’s arm again, but pulled back when Kady flinched. “Anyway, it’s not really me he’s in love with. It’s some other version of me. What I’d be like without Reynard, maybe. He doesn’t love whatever me I am right now.”

“Then he’s an idiot,” Kady said flatly. “You used to just be some rich chick with magic, but now you’re the strongest person on the goddamn planet. You are _literally_ a goddess now because of how well you’ve handled yourself since that asshole ruined your life.”

Something toxic rose up in Julia’s throat. She almost gagged on it. Her words came out almost a whisper. “I don’t think I want to be a goddess as much as I want to have never met Reynard.”

Kady’s face shifted. “Oh shit, Julia, I didn’t mean— fuck, I’m sorry.”

“It just—it doesn’t make it all okay, you know?”

“Of course not. God, I’m an idiot. I just meant—all I was trying to say is that if that knockoff version of Penny can’t see how amazing this version of you is, that’s his problem. I didn’t mean you’re better off than you would have been—”

“I know.”

“And it is amazing,” Kady said. “The magic that you do, your power. It’s amazing.”

Julia nodded tiredly. “Yeah, I mean I guess with everything that’s happened it’s nice to know one good thing came of it, right?” There was a long silence before she spoke again. “I’m just trying to figure out how to move forward, you know?” The weight of her body felt insurmountable. “I’m trying, every day, I just—how you move on after your whole world is destroyed?”

Kady gave a half-laugh.

“Hey, I’m serious.”

“I know.” Kady pushed back her hair with one hand, then looked resolutely out the window. Her whole body seemed on edge. “It’s not a spell, Julia. You can’t just practice until you get it right. You just _do_ it. You want to move on? You do whatever it takes not to fucking kill yourself and hope that maybe one day you’ll feel better.”

“But there’s got to be a way to—”

“There isn’t, okay?” Kady snapped. Her voice softened when she spoke again. “Listen, you’re not the only one who watched all of them die, okay? I have nightmares too. I know they’re not the same as yours, but—anyway, it’s not just Reynard. It’s my mom and all the bullshit Marina pulled and watching Penny dying—Fuck, Julia. If there was a way to move on, don’t you think I would have fucking done it already? But they don’t teach that at rehab, because nobody knows what the hell to do about it. You just have to get through it.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Julia said quietly. She looked down at the marks on the table. Someone had carved some letters inside a heart, but whatever had once been inside was scratched out. “I keep thinking if I just get through one more thing, it’ll start to get better. But then I get through it, and there’s more. I feel like—”

“Like you’re going crazy?”

Julia looked up in surprise. “Well, yeah.”

For a moment, Kady’s eyes were awash with sympathy. Then she broke eye contact. “Well, the good news is that in my experience, the moment you wake up and understand how crazy are is just a few steps before the moment where you actually start to feel a bit better.”

Julia took a shaky breath. “I guess I’ll just have to live with that, then,” she said. 

“Cool.” Kady glanced around the bar. “You want to do some shots?”

Julia nodded shakily. “Yeah, I could do with being less sober right now.”

When their tequila arrived, Kady drank hers immediately. Julia ran her finger around the rim of the glass. The salt made its way into a papercut she hadn’t known she had. It stung. She took the shot. They ordered another round.

“It’s just that I can’t stop thinking about it,” she said three shots in. “Did you know that I’ve thought about Reynard literally every day since he raped me?”

Kady looked down. “I’ve thought about him every day too.” After a moment, she sighed. “You know what? Forget everything I just told you. What the hell do I know, anyway? Like I’m some great expert in coping, right?”

“It’s not your fault you have a genetic propensity towards addiction,” Julia said automatically.

“Yeah, but I’m the one who made the choice to start shooting up. And now everything’s bad again, and it’s like—I don’t know how much longer I can keep making good choices for.”

Julia looked at Kady. Her fingers were tapping on the table, body unable to be fully still. Julia wondered how long it had been since she’d last slept. She thought about the nightmares, how good it had felt to have someone sleeping close to her even when she didn’t want to be touched. She had never loved a partner so much that she minded losing them. The look in Kady’s eyes when Penny died was alien to her. The only thing that Julia could even remotely compare it to was how she had felt when she’d refused to kill Reynard and Kady had walked away.

“Maybe I could help you,” Julia said. Her voice sounded desperate, but maybe Kady wouldn’t notice. “Your Penny’s in the underworld, right? What if we could get him out?”

Kady didn’t even look up. “I don’t think we can. I’ve been researching the library contracts, nobody’s ever managed to break one.”

Julia thought for a moment. “Maybe we wouldn’t have to break the contract,” she said. “If we could get him back to earth and into a body, maybe he could work in the earth branch. Then at least you could still see him sometimes. It’d be better than nothing.”

Kady crossed her arms. “What body are you suggesting we put him into?”

“When Alice had my magic, she offered to build him one. I don’t know how, but if I’m really this powerful—maybe she could teach me.”

“Maybe.” Kady looked at her thoughtfully. “Okay, so tell me what you’re thinking.”

*

Julia walked through the hallway towards her bedroom. She wondered who it had belonged to, before Brakebills closed. Margo and Eliot could have told her, maybe, but they hadn’t been back to the physical cottage in some time.

“Julia,” Penny’s voice trailed softly down the hall, as she’d known it would.

She turned her head. “Yes?”

He was smiling softly at her. His eyes were full of love. “I was wondering when you’d be back. Your room or mine tonight?”

Julia hesitated, then shook her head. “I can’t do this with you anymore. It’s not fair to Kady.”

“We’ve been over this. I’m not the person she’s in love with.”

“If that’s true, then I’m not who you were in love with either.” The words came out harsher than she intended, but Julia didn’t want to swallow them back up. They lingered in the space between her body and Penny’s. They felt right. 

Penny stared at her for a long moment, then said, “Fine. Just call me if you need me, okay?”

“I won’t.” Their eyes met, and all at once Julia understood exactly what Kady had been trying to say to her. She looked away. “Thank you.”

She walked into her room and closed the door, refusing to watch it shut behind her.


	4. Chapter 4

“So this one’s a bust,” Kady said, tossing her book onto the table. Several pages bent as it landed. “Dude claims to be a necromancer but none of his herbs are remotely consistent with what any of the hedges have said. Probably some sort of extortionist.”

Julia glanced at the title, then crossed it off her list. “The next one looks like it could be helpful, but it isn’t at the Brakebills library anymore.” The pile of usable content was growing smaller by the minute. Everything useful had already been looted. At this point, they were relying on obscure or illegible texts to guide them.

“I’ll see if Harriet knows anything.”

“Okay, then I’ll hit some of the hedgewitch chatrooms. Vicious Circe still pulls some weight in some of those circles.”

“Cool.” Kady hadn’t moved from her chair, but her body was alive with some sort of frantic motion. Julia realized shew as staring, and looked away. 

“I guess we can stop for now,” she said, for the sake of having something to say. “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere with books anymore.”

*

_Her feet pound against the forest floor, which is the floor of the library at Brakebills. Our Lady Underground is far too graceful to run, but she is always almost out of sight, hidden amongst the stacks. Julia didn’t mean to be looking for her. She was trying to find Penny, and maybe this isn’t the Brakebills library at all, maybe it’s The Library and that’s why she’s here, but then, why is it empty except for Our Lady Underground?_

 _Why is it empty, and why are all of the books the same as each other, why do they all say her name on them? How can a person live so many thousands of lives? She starts to pull the books off the shelf, flipping through to the last few pages to see her different fates, but they all have the same words,_ life cannot be found in death, _and all Julia wants to do is tear them out and rip them into tiny bits. >_

__

*

Julia was still thinking about the dream when Penny approached her the next day. He was on the couch in the physical cottage, eating a bowl of fruit loops. When she entered the room, he stood, spilling milk onto his coat.

“I’ve seen what you and Kady are doing,” he said. He made no effort to dry the stain. “I could help, you know.”

“Wouldn’t that be kind of weird for you?” Julia asked. Her eyes kept being drawn back to the cereal on the end table, the drips of liquid on the floor. You were supposed to fix this kind of thing, get to the stains before they set—didn’t Penny know to be cautious of permanence? “I mean, since it’s a different version of you we’re trying to bring back? Especially with everything—” she gestured vaguely. 

Penny shrugged. “I don’t mind. I think I’ve made peace with myself enough to face him when I see him. Besides, maybe it’ll make things right with Kady. I know you’re trying not to hurt her. This could help, right?”

Of course. Because that was always what this had been about. A tiny creature seemed to be in Julia’s chest, painfully clawing it’s way out. She forced herself not to close her eyes, not to become small. “Bringing back the other Penny doesn’t necessarily mean you and I would—”

“I know. Trust me, I’ve got no hidden agenda here.”

But that didn’t make any sense. “I don’t think I could do the same thing, in your position,” she said. “Seeing another way I could have been—especially if she’s doing better than me—I just don’t like what-ifs.”

“You keep telling me it’s not you,” Penny said. “It wouldn’t be like bringing back myself. Just a dude who looks like me and has a thing or two in common.”

Something harsh and chemical burned its way through Julia’s body. “It was you, though,” she said. She crossed her arms to stop herself from scratching at her skin. “It’s who you could have been. And you know you can’t get back to that person now, no matter how hard you want to. They’re gone. You just have to move forward with the shitty hand you’ve been dealt.”

“I’m not afraid of myself.”

“Maybe you should be.”

Penny stared at her, then shrugged and looked away. “If you don’t want me to help, fine, but I don’t see how it makes much of a difference if you’re bringing back the other Penny anyway. It’s not like your success depends on whether or not I help you.”

Julia took a moment to find her words. “I know you’re only doing this for me,” she said finally. 

“Yeah, and you’re only doing it for Kady. What’s the difference?”

But she wasn’t only doing it for Kady. She was doing it because the dead must have things to say. She was doing to understand what was possible, if the rotting could really ever be reversed and the soul put back inside. She was doing it because there was nothing else to do.

“Fine,” she said, and something inside of her must have broken open a let a tiny drop of magic trickle out, because when she looked at Penny and the table again, the milk was nowhere to be seen.

*

Kady walked into their alcove of the torn-up library, stopped, and crossed her arms. “What’s _he_ doing here?”

“Well, hello to you too,” Penny said, not looking up from his book. 

“He’s helping us,” Julia said. “He offered.” She found herself unable to fully look at Kady. Instead, her eyes darted about the badly looted room. She’d had to dig for a third chair that wasn’t too badly ruined to make room for Penny, and in the end, she’d cheated and used a tiny bit of magic to close up a large tear that ran across it. 

“Like hell he is.”

Penny sighed loudly. “Are you going to sit down or what?”

Kady shook her head. “No. Not until you leave so Julia and I can talk about this _alone._ ”

“Whatever.” Penny got to his feet and swung his coat over his shoulders. “I’d just as soon not be here for whatever dramatic bullshit you’re about to pull.” 

He was barely out of sight amongst the stacks when Kady turned to Julia. “What the hell?” she asked, hands balling up into fists. “You had no right to bring him here.”

“He offered to help!”

“Yeah, because he wants to screw you,” Kady snorted. “If you think for one second he’s not secretly sabotaging us behind our backs—”

“Why would he do that?”

“Why wouldn’t he? What do you think he stands to gain from _our_ Penny coming back to life? Do you really think he wants an infinitely preferable double running around?”

“Maybe he’s just curious! Do you really think there’s nothing to gain from seeing who he could have been? Maybe if he sees his options, he can choose who to be.”

“God!” Kady crossed her arms. “That’s bullshit, Julia! If you want to change, no one’s stopping you! You don’t have to see other versions of yourself to have a choice.”

Julia stared at Kady, who raised an eyebrow in a challenge. She felt as if her limbs were being pulled in all directions, leaving her without a center. “Are you talking about Penny or me?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady. 

“You tell me,” Kady said.

There was no right answer. Julia stepped forward. She wanted closeness. She wanted to be _understood,_ and nobody but Kady had ever come close to giving that to her. “I don’t know,” she said, taking another step so their bodies were only inches apart. “I don’t know anything anymore.” Their eyes were locked together. Julia couldn’t look away. 

All at once, Kady grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled their bodies together. Her kiss felt frantic, almost angry, as though all of the energy she’d been using to fight was now being poured into this gesture. Julia put up her hands and caught Kady by the waist. It was like trying to catch a tornado with her bare hands. Kady’s arms slid further up her shoulders until they were looped around her neck, but the kiss didn’t soften. There was no eye of a tornado, no calm spot in the middle of all the chaos. It could destroy you, or it could lift you off the ground and deposit you somewhere new. There were no other options. 

So Julia kissed back, sucking Kady’s lower lip into her mouth and letting her fingers dance across Kady’s waist.


	5. Chapter 5

The Brakebills library pulsed with silence. Julia tried to focus on her book, but found herself staring at Kady out of the corner of her eyes. Whenever she forced herself to look away, she was pulled back in by the sound of loud page turning. Kady was moving through her so quickly that she couldn’t possibly have been reading them, and more than once she had to do a spell to reattach a page she’d torn. 

Things had been like this the entire goddamn week. Every time Julia opened her mouth to say something, the words had died up in her throat.

“What?” Kady snapped, not looking up.

“I didn’t say anything,” Julia said. She ran her fingers along the necklace that she’d worn for the first time in months. The edges of the heart were dull and jagged.

Kady flipped several pages in a row. “You’ve been staring at me all morning.”

Julia shrugged. She could feel her face beginning to warm. If she didn’t say something now, she knew she never would. “Just trying to figure out if you’re going to ignore me for the rest of our lives because you don’t know how to deal with the fact that we kissed.”

“Oh, grow up. Are you going to tell me you’ve never been ghosted by those boring dudes you always wind up dating?”

“Just never expected to be ghosted by you.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Are you?” Julia asked. When Kady still didn’t look up, she closed her book and put it neatly into her pile. “I think I should go.”

She stood to leave, but Kady grabbed her arm. “Wait.”

“Why?”

Kady rose to her feet. “Just wait,” she said again, softly, and then they were kissing.

Kady’s lips were warm and wet. Julia could taste the metallic tinge in the spot where Kady had been biting her lip as she worked. She stroked the back of Kady’s neck, sighing as Kady leaned into her touch. _Shit._ This was the sort of path that was harder to leave than it was to get onto, like now that they’d let something happen, there wasn’t anything to stop it happening over and over.

Maybe it wasn’t their fault. Maybe it had started long before now. Maybe it had gone on, over and over, before this timeloop had existed. And maybe, if that was true, it was inevitable. An object moving towards another object unless a force equal to or greater than it decides to push back.

Kady slid her arms tighter around Julia’s waist, and for a moment the space between their bodies was too small to be seen as space at all. Then, all at once, she pulled away. 

“What just happened?” Julia asked. Her voice sounded breathless, like she was some ditzy fucking girl in a teen movie who had just been kissed by the average-looking leading man. 

Kady had already returned to her books. “It won’t happen again.”

“This is already the again.”

“Look, can we just get back to the research?”

“Kady, you just kissed me.”

“Can we not talk about it?” Kady asked, roughly brushing her hair out of her face. “It’s not a big deal. Let’s just get back to your mission of guilt so that you can help me get my Penny back and then you can bang your Penny without feeling like you’re betraying me.”

“That’s not why I’m doing this.”

Kady shrugged. 

“It’s not.” Julia’s stomach tightened with the need to make Kady understand. “I’m not using you.”

“It’s fine. Everyone else does.”

Julia opened her mouth to say _not me,_ to say _I’d never do that,_ to say any of the things that people say before they end up screwing the person over anyway, but before she could get a single word out, Kady had turned back to her book and was turning pages with an intensity that bordered on violence. 

“It’s whatever,” Kady said at last. “Once my Penny’s back, we don’t have to spend any more time together.”

Julia’s stomach dropped. “Yeah,” she said, fingering her necklace. A rough spot on the chain scraped against her finger. “I guess you’re right.”

*

_Our Lady Underground’s breath was heavy in her ear. “Watch closely,” she instructed._

_It was a bad film reel, on a loop and decaying as Julia watched. Penny’s hand, reaching for the cupcake. Penny’s arm (splotches had appeared over the screen, but Julia could see what was happening) lifting the food to his mouth. As he ate, the footage disappeared and then restarted, over and over for eternity._

_There was a cup of popcorn in the cup holder. Julia reached for it, but before she could bring the food to her mouth it had transformed into purple seeds. It fell between her fingers. Her hands shook._

_“You’re not watching closely,” said a voice from the screen, and Julia couldn’t move. The film was badly distorted, but she didn’t need to see it. She’d recognize that voice anywhere, for the rest of her goddamn motherfucking life._

*

When Julia woke up, her breath was coming in short gasps. She struggled for air, but her lungs didn’t seem to be under her control. Her room was darker than it had been when she’d fallen asleep. Her eyes refused to adjust.

In college, Julia had experienced sleep paralysis so bad that some mornings she thought there was someone in the room with her, laying on top of her chest, even after the doctor had told her what was going on. Her eyes would dart around the room for the intruder, for some sort of terrifying figure that would at least make the world make sense again. Anything besides being trapped by her own goddamn body.

A knock sounded on the door, and before Julia had registered that she was moving she was sitting upright with the blanket wrapped around her body. Armor woven from wool. “What?” she asked. Her voice shook.

The door opened, and Penny was there in her doorway. 

“I heard crying,” he said. “I won’t come in, if you don’t want me to, just—tell me whether you’re okay, all right? I know I’m not supposed to worry about you or whatever, but I do.”

Julia’s breath came in a shuddering gasp. “It was her,” she said. “Our Lady Underground.”

“Who?”

Right. Because this Penny didn’t know any of it, hadn’t helped them try to kill a god, hadn’t seen the intricacy of this Julia’s pain, or worse, what had happened when the pain was gone. 

“My rapist’s mother.”

“Jesus.” Penny’s fingers seemed to twitch at his side. “The hell she want?”

“It was about you. I mean—other you—I mean, it was about Kady’s Penny. In the underworld. Penny, I don’t think he can come back. He ate the food there.”

“Calm down,” Penny said. He was so real and three-dimensional that he almost erased the Penny in the dream. Julia wrapped her arms around herself. Maybe there was no underworld Penny. Maybe the only things that existed were those that could be seen and felt. “What makes you so sure he can’t come back?”

“Haven’t you read the myth of Persephone?” A girl, dragged into the underworld by a man with power. A girl, who grew into a woman who did nothing to protect others against men with power.

If it had been Julia who’d eaten the seeds, she’d have stuck her finger down her fucking throat until there wasn’t a single one left.

“Screw Persephone,” Penny said. “It’s a story. We don’t know what really happened. If you can actually bring someone back from the Underworld, I don’t see how Other-Me eating the food is going to stop you.”

Julia thought about this, and nodded shakily. “I don’t even know if the dream was real,” she said. “Maybe it wasn’t anything at all.”

Penny nodded. He glanced towards the hallway. “Well, I’ll be in my room if you—”

“Can you come the fuck here?” Julia cut him off. She wiped her eyes. “Can you just come the fuck over here and hold me until I think it’s all going to be okay?”

Penny hesitated. “I thought you didn’t want that.”

“I do.”

“I don’t want to take advantage here just because you’re vulnerable. You told me Kady would hate you if it looked like anything was happening between you and me.”

“Yeah, well Kady already hates me, so it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“I doubt that’s true,” Penny said, taking half a step forward into her room. “Anyway, I’m not sure I want to be a pawn you use to get back at her for whatever’s going on.”

“That’s not what I’m doing!” Julia snapped. She could feel her shoulders shaking, but only in the detached sort of way she’d notice a bug on the windowsill or a hole in someone else’s jeans. “I’m just feeling too many fucking things and you keep saying you want to help me. If that’s what you want, this is how you can help me. Okay?”

Penny said nothing, just did that thing where he looked at her and she knew she was all he could see, and god _damn_ it was she going to have to stand up and drag him over here herself?

“Okay?” Julia repeated, in a smaller voice this time.

“Okay,” Penny said, his voice so gentle it hurt. He stepped into the room, then moved the covers and crawled into bed next to Julia. The gesture was so intimate and familiar that for a moment Julia thought she might cry.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Penny asked, sliding an arm under her body so that Julia could rest her head on his chest.

She could hear Penny’s heart, beating so loudly that she no longer had to hear her own. “Yes,” she said, closing her eyes against the vast expanse of her bedroom. “This right here is exactly what I want.”


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning in the library, Julia met Kady in a secluded corner. The shelves loomed high, enclosing them in the space so it felt as though they might truly be alone. She told her about the dream. 

“I know I don’t usually have the kind of dreams that tell the future, but it was Our Lady Underground, and the symbolism—Kady, I think he’s really gone.” The words tumbled out gracelessly. There were a thousand ways she could have said it better.

Penny was gone.

Kady’s eyes roamed the shelves of books, as though she weren’t really paying attention. “I know,” she said at last, biting her lip. “I think I’ve known this whole time. I just thought maybe—if it was you doing it—but you’re right, he’s not coming back. Dead is fucking dead.”

“So what now?” She reached out and touched Kady’s wrist, which was immediately yanked away.

“What do you mean, what now? Jules, we’ve spent weeks on research and haven’t found anything, and now Our Lady fucking Underground is telling you he’s not coming back. Let’s face it. This is the end of the road.” Kady threw her bag over her shoulder. “Thanks for trying. I’ll see you around.”

This wasn’t right. Kady couldn’t just leave. “Is this it then?” Julia asked. There was a bite to her voice that surprised her “We go our separate ways, act like none of what happened between us happened?”

Kady finally looked at her, and Julia’s whole body buzzed from the eye contact. Her breath caught in her throat.

“What else would there be?”

Julia didn’t answer.

Kady grabbed her hand and squeezed it gently. “Hey, maybe it’s better this way. Now you can date your Penny without worrying about me.”

“What will you do?”

“That’s my problem, not yours.”

Julia’s heart pounded painfully. “What if that’s not what I want?” she asked. “What if I want you in my life more than I want Penny?”

“Well, do you?” Kady asked.

This time, it was Julia who looked away. Kady’s hand in hers felt like home, but so did the thought of Penny’s arms, wrapped tightly around her through the long night. She couldn’t seem to separate the two.

After a moment, Kady let go of her hand and walked away, disappearing into the shelves so quickly it was like she had never been there to begin with.

* 

Julia laid back on the couch and took another swig from the flask—probably Eliot’s—that she had found between two of the cushions. Her thoughts, which had been swimming in circles since this morning, had finally settled down into soft waves.

Kady didn’t want to see her anymore. That was okay. She could move on with her life, let herself fall in love with Penny. It would be a simple, girl-meets-boy kind of story story. There’d be someone to take care of her, and maybe soon she’d be strong enough to take care of him too. 

But Kady was the one who had taken care of her. Kady was the one who’d dragged her out of the aching chasm of her mind and helped her take on Reynard. Kady was the one who’d kept her sane, even when she’d lost the core of herself. Kady had been her missing chip.

Footsteps from behind the couch alerted Julia to another person’s presence. “What do you want?” she asked, only a slight slur in her words.

“It’s me,” Fen said, stepping forward. “Todd told me you were out here getting trashed. I wanted to see if you were okay.” 

“Todd should mind his own business.”

Fen nudged her feet out of the way and sat on the couch next to her. “Can I have some of whatever you’re drinking?”

“I’m not sure what it is.”

“Well it’s got to be better than the time Elliot insisted he could make a national drink for Fillory but didn’t realize that the shit he was pulling out of the palace garden wasn’t earth basil.”

Julia laughed. “Drinker’s choice, then,” she said, passing the flask. 

“So, I know what problems I’m trying to deal with by getting drunk in the middle of the day,” Fen said, taking a swig. “I also know that it doesn’t work quite as well as making little balls of glass and smashing them, but it’s probably best that you’re not around an open flame right now.”

“Well then, what exactly do you suggest I do?”

“Well, when my daughter died people kept telling me I should talk about it,” Fen said. “It was bullshit, but it helped. So. Do you want to talk?”

Julia stole the flask back and took another sip, letting it burn in her throat. “I’m going to have to choose between the two most important people in my life.”

“Kady and Penny 23, right?” When Julia looked at her in surprise, Fen rolled her eyes. “I have eyes, you know. I can see things that happen around me. So what is it, are you in love with both of them and they’re asking you to choose?”

“I don’t know. Sort of. I don’t even know if I do love both,” Julia said, wiping her eyes. “They feel different. I just don’t know which one is real. With Kady, it’s like my heart is constantly racing and I’m feeling everything and once, super intense and beautiful. And with Penny it’s like—he feels solid. When I’m in his arms I don’t have to think about it or feel the most of everything. I can just be.”

“Why can’t they both be real?”

“Because they’re so different. When I’m with Penny it’s not about longing in the same way. Maybe it’s not really love. Maybe I just need someone to take care of me.”

“Maybe,” Fen said. “Or maybe you don’t have to long for him because you know he’s not going to disappear. You love him and you know he’s there and it doesn’t have to get more complicated than that.”

“If I long for Kady more than him, does that mean I love her more, or just that I’m more scared she’s going away?”

“Why does it matter who you love more?”

Julia scratched at the inside of her arm. “If I don’t choose now, it’s just going to get harder to figure out what I want.”

Fen frowned. “Why should you have to choose?”

“What, you mean like date them both?

“In Fillory, it’s not uncommon to take both a wife and a husband. Is it not the same here?”

“Outside of some pretty specific subcultures, no.” Julia had known a few polycules in college, but she’d never thought of doing it herself. It had been hard enough to get her family to understand when she came out as bisexual. Bringing home two partners would have been a no-go.

“Is there anything preventing you from doing it?” Fen asked. “Because if there’s anything Eliot’s shown me, it’s that sometimes we have something to gain by learning how to do things a different way.”

“I’m not sure I’d know how to,” Julia said softly. 

“Well, which is worse? Trying something new, or making a choice you don’t want to make?”

Julia closed her eyes, because that was just it, wasn’t it? Making choices. But the last time she’d chosen anything, it had wrecked her from the inside out. It wasn’t worth wanting things when you couldn’t have them. There was no wonderful goddess coming to save her. 

Fen’s voice was soft as she took Julia’s hand. “I get it,” she said. “Sometimes it hurts so much that it feels better not to try. But you know what? I’d go through it all again. I’d have another kid, even after what happened. Not to replace— I’d do it again because of love. I will spend my whole life loving the daughter I lost, but I still think it’s worth it to love again.”

_Do you really?_ Julia didn’t ask. She knew that no answer in the world could make her sure. Kady’s face danced in front of her closed eyes, followed by Penny’s.

Maybe it was safer to choose neither, to let herself sink into the abyss once and for all, to be alone.

But maybe it was time to stop making safe choices.


	7. Chapter 7

The door was more solid than it had ever been.

Julia reached up her arm to knock. Time slowed, and she remembered her Sophomore philosophy class and how they’d talked about Zeno’s paradox, how every movement could be divided into an infinite series of halves. How she’d never get there.

_Screw that,_ she thought, moving her fist the rest of the way to the door before she could think about it any further. The noise was louder than she expected. Penny opened the door immediately.

His clothes looked rumpled, and his hair was messy. He blinked groggily, and for a moment he reminded Julia of the other timeline’s Penny so much that she almost slammed the door.

“You wanna come in?” he asked.

Julia nodded, swallowing hard. She followed him into the bedroom. The curtains were slightly open, orange-yellow light staining the room.

“So?” Penny asked.

“We need to talk.” Julia looked at her hands.

“About Kady, right?”

“How did you know?”

“I saw you in the library yesterday,” Penny said. He touched Julia’s cheek, and she looked into his eyes in spite of herself. “You love her, don’t you?”

Julia’s heart was beating out of her chest. This was her Penny, despite the dishevelment. It was the way he always knew her, knew what she was like even before she’d found the words to say it. She nodded. “I think so.”

“Well, whatever you have with her—it’s strong. And you’ve built it together. It’s not like—with me, you’re always going to feel like I’m looking at someone else. No matter how much I love this version of you, you won’t feel like you got the same sort of choice. So you should be with her.”

“I don’t want to lose either of you,” Julia said. A tear slipped down her cheek. “I need you both.” She swiped at her face angrily. She must be the most selfish person on the face of the earth. 

Penny reached up and wiped her tear away, so gentle she almost started crying harder. “You need me, but you don’t love me.”

“I don’t know.” There were claws scraping through the inside of Julia’s heart. She grabbed onto Penny’s hands, only half sure of what she was doing. “Do you think maybe—what if I didn’t have to choose?”

“So what, I’d keep taking care of you while you date her?”

The claws grew sharper. Julia yanked her hands away.“Is that really all you think this is? You taking care of me?”

Penny shrugged. “Well, you haven’t really given me any reason to think otherwise.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but there was nothing she could say. Instead Julia wrapped her arms around herself, struggling for words. “I haven’t really—for a long time after Reynard—God, I don’t even know how to tell this like a story, okay! Kady was there for all of it. I don’t have to tell her—she knows everything.”

“Right,” Penny said slowly. “I get that. That’s what I was just saying. She knows _you._ ”

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t—fuck, is it okay for me to say I don’t know?” The tears were coming faster now. “What if I know how I feel about her, but not about you? Is it okay for me to want both? Is it okay to spend some time together so I can figure out what this is?”

Penny crossed his arms. “Are you asking if we can be poly?”

“I guess.” Julia took a shaky breath. “Yes, that’s what I’m asking.”

“Sure. As long as it’s okay with Kady.”

“Are you—”

“Sure? Absolutely. Love is love, it doesn’t matter if you’re also having it with someone else. As long as you don’t resent me for not being her.”

“I won’t.” 

“And as long as you’re not just using this as a way to let me down easy when you’re not really interested.”

“I’m not.” Something in Julia’s chest was loosening, something that had been tight for as long as she could remember. She breathed. It felt easy. 

How long has she spent living in a body in which breathing was hard?

“Okay, then. It’s fine with me if it’s fine with her. Just don’t wait too long to ask her, okay? There’s only so long a guy can live with uncertainty for.”

Penny’s eyes were deep and brown, and they knew her completely. Julia nodded, and wrapped her arms around him tightly. When he returned the gesture, she leaned her head into his chest. 

And maybe it was cliché, like some fucking rom-com with a guy whose face you can’t even remember but honestly?

Penny’s arms felt like home.

*

Julia left Penny’s bedroom soon after that, but even so, it took all day to track Kady down. As the sun was setting, she saw her on the edge of the woods. There were targets painted onto several trees. Kady was throwing knives at them.

Her aim was good. 

“Hey,” Julia said, taking a step closer.

Kady spun around, almost dropping her knife in the process. “You scared me,” she said. “The hell do you want?”

Julia swallowed hard. “This is already really hard for me to ask,” she said. “Can you please just let me get through it?”

“Fine.” Kady threw the last knife at a target. Dead center. She turned to face Julia, hands on her hips. “What do you need to say that wouldn’t fit into an easily ignorable text message?”

“You’re an idiot,” Julia said. “And you’re wrong. I don’t want to go our separate ways.”

“Jules, I know you’re in love with Penny.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t love you too. Penny said—he’s okay with it if you’re okay with it. We could all—you two wouldn’t have to be together, obviously, but—he says I don’t have to choose.

There was a long silence. Kady ran her hands through her hair. “Shit, Jules. If it were any other guy—”

“I know.”

“It’s just—every time I see you with him, it hurts, okay? I know it’s not _him_ him, but— he has the same face as the man I thought I was going to spend my life with. And seeing him look at you like that—and I know it’s not fair, and I know it’s not anyone’s fault, but—”

“I get it,” Julia said. “I’m sorry, it was a stupid idea. I’ll just—”

She started to walk away, but Kady grabbed her arm. “Shit, Jules, just give me a second to figure out how I’m feeling!” She took a deep breath. “How would you feel about trying something out? I mean, we don’t have to stick to whatever we decide, right? We can give it a try, and if it doesn’t work out—I mean, that’s just life sometimes, right? No big deal.”

“I don’t want to hurt you more than I already have.”

“I mean, it wouldn’t be all bad.”

“What do you mean?”

Kady smiled wryly. “Jules, if you think I haven’t been half in love with you since you came to find me even after I abandoned you with Reynard, then you’re a fucking idiot.”

“But I thought—you and Penny—”

“You think you’re the only one who can be in love with more than one person at a time?”

Julia laughed, but she could feel tears forming in her eyes. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess.”

“Hey, we’ve already seen each other at our worst, right?” Kady said. She reached out and tenderly tucked a strand of hair behind Julia’s hair. “It’s too late, Jules. I know you. For better or worse.”

Julia swallowed hard. “For better or worse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone who stuck with this story even though it took me approximately 11 months to finish, thank you so much! Your comments kept me going and without your support, I'm not sure I would have written past the first chapter. Lots of love, and feel free to find me on tumblr! @monstrous-femme

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr url is @bisexual-meme-thief. Come talk to me about my fics!


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